What happens when the unscrupulous tell lies about scientists?

Scientists get death threats, that what happens. Because the ignorant and anxious actually trust what they hear from Faux News and Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt and Lord Monckton and all the other people making big media circus and speaking-tour money on the back of naysaying – the repeated claim that it’s the climate scientists who are deliberately making up stuff about climate change just so that they can rake in the ill-gotten gains.

When you hear news like this, it’s hard to feel too relaxed about the good news that hardline climate change doubters make up less than 6% of the population, because too many pundits with media megaphones are dominating the airwaves, giving the impression that there are more doubters than there really are, and our gutless politicians are to easily swayed by their own impressionability.

What if it's all a big hoax, and we create a better world for nothing?

6 replies

One researcher told of receiving threats of sexual assault and violence against her children after her photograph appeared in a newspaper article promoting a community tree-planting day as a local action to mitigate climate change.
From the Canberra Times

There’s probably a master’s thesis somewhere about the [usually male, usually old] denialists’ hatred of the fact that Nature (aka femaleness) has limits and is finally pushing back against exploitation, just like all those dreadful bra-burners did in the 1960s (collapse of family, Western civ, fill in Andrew Boltisms here….)

That cartoon sums up a LOT of my thoughts about this debate:
1. We are a dirty wasteful species.
2. There are cleaner and less wasteful ways of living, and living well.
3. If we make the changes in time, our grand children and great grandchildren
will live in a cleaner and healthier world.
4. If we don’t — they will suffer.
Gae, in Callala Bay